Tests? Questions?

[Crazymrsrees79]

Bit of a long post sorry 😐

Hi all, as some of you may seen my post last week with the failed Ivf, I have a n appointment with the consultant on 27th July. I have questions but I’m trying to think of the real important ones, with having 2 good grade blastocysts last time, I can’t help but think ‘is it because I can’t carry a child?’etc. What tests are done for this and all the others that go with it? Before considering paying for a round privately I want to know all that can be done, it’s not like we have the ££££’s to spend and not get a good outcome at the end of it. I would do anything and if it means we do have a chance I will happily get a loan or credit card.

Me and the hubby have considered the other options like adopting, donor sperm/eggs etc, we haven’t talked about surrogacy because we don’t know how that bit works, ie do you have someone that you know to carry your child or a stranger etc. We have said that things could change a year down the line and we might want to adopt, you just can’t tell. He did however say that he didn’t want me to be unhappy and if it got to the point of us arguing that he wouldn’t blame me for wanting to find another man 😢😢😢, he didn’t say it in a bad way at all, he just wants me to be happy and I most certainly wouldn’t leave him but I don’t know if I would regret things years to come. I just can’t tell. If only we could have a magic mirror!!

It’s so hard 😢😢😢

Advice will be much appreciated from you brave ladies 😘😘😘 xx

[Hidden]

Hey there, I think there are really experienced ladies on here that will definitely help you, but I thought I would share my experience with you as we have just been through the same thing, even though we have only had 1 x fresh transfer so far.

I am sorry to hear about your BFN - we were in the same position a few weeks ago and were keen to get answers from our consultant and really desperate to know why ours failed too. I am also 37 yrs old.

So did you have 2 blasts put in this time? Or you saved one for the freezer?

We had 2 blasts - good quality and had 1 x put back and it failed, 1 put in the freezer. So our consultant said the reason was not so clear....but that at my age 50% of my eggs are going to fail no matter what state my body is in, and how well equipped I am to receive the embryo. This is really frustrating, but made sense I suppose. He was hopeful for the remaining embryo in the freezer...we have never uncovered the reason and are unexplained.

I would urge you to take it one step at a time and see what they say - sometimes it is not you - it is just so random.....

Hopefully others give you some info on their experiences too.

Best of luck with it all.

xxx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Hidden]

Thank you for the info, very much appreciated xx

[Hidden in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

My consultant kept saying 'we don't have a crystal ball' as my mind wanted to be 10 steps ahead in the process....

Hope you get a good list of questions together and they can advise what to change next time round.

Fingers crossed xxx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Hidden]

Thank you so much, I don’t know how you kept it together with the answer they gave you 😳😡 xx

[Hidden in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

Well we mentally prepared ourselves for 3 cycles....that is the only way we kept sane (ish)

Xxx

[Olivia80]

One question I have is, what would be different if I paid that much money. My half sister had one failed NHS cycle and I asked her what was different second time, she said it was coz she went private. She had 1 blast with the NHS, then 6 with private. Then each time had two put back in, and gave birth to her 3rd baby 3 days ago.

We have one NHS round left and due to my health issues and supposedly a higher chance of miscarriage, we don’t want to spend £8+k on something that isn’t guaranteed!

So that would be my question, if I paid £x thousands, what is different. From my clinic, all it looked like was a dressing gown instead of a skanky blanket! 🤣

[Lizzielizzielizzie in reply to Olivia80]

I think the more rounds you have, the more they can learn and the more tweaks they can make to protocol etc- it may not be to do with going private it may be that they looked at her nhs round and learned from it, and changed drugs as necessary. My second round they gave me a 37 hour trigger instead of a 36 hour and i got three times as many mature eggs. They wouldn’t have known to do this if I hadn’t had a dreadful first round.

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Olivia80]

Thank you for the info, very much appreciated xx

[Lizzielizzielizzie]

We asked for every test our clinic offered after a natural miscarriage and two failed ivfs. It cost £3000. Some of the tests are recognised by the nhs and some are not. In our case it identified the problem so it was worth it. But I’m not sure how I would have felt about spending £3grand if it hadn’t done, and that was a real possibility. Our clinic usually test people with “ level one” tests first then do “level two” to try to keep the cost down a bit, but we just went for it all at once. I just wanted to give you an idea of costs.

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Lizzielizzielizzie]

Thank you for the info, would you be able to tell me the tests that they do please? If you don’t remember them then no problem xx

[Lizzielizzielizzie in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

I can’t tell you in any detail because we never got a list, but it was 16 vials of blood from me and 2 from hubbie. The one which showed up our problem was chromosome karyotyping, they also tested my clotting, nk cells (though you can have this done in Coventry via an internal sample as well, as part of an nhs research project but you pay), folic acid absorption, not sure what else.

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Lizzielizzielizzie]

Thank you x

[Wishingfortheday in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

Hi there, I've had level one and two immunology tests at my clinic. Don't know if this is still of help to you, but I got this list from the Zita West website (I didn't get my tests done there but the tests should be pretty much the same wherever you go):

Level 1 Tests (for underlying medical issues)

:

FBC (Full Blood Count)

Fasting blood glucose,

LFTs,

U&Es,

Thyroid function – TSH, FT4,

Thrombophilia screen – anticardiolipin antibodies (IgG and IgM),

Antithrombin 111,

Factor V Leiden,

Factor II prothrombin gene,

PAIP polymorphism,

Activated protein C resistance,

Protein C / Protein S,

Lupus anticoagulant,

MTHFR,

Auto-immune antibodies – including anti-nuclear antibodies,

Thyroid peroxidise and anti-mitochondrial antibodies,

PAIP polymorphism

Auto-immune antibodies

Chromosome karotype (female)

Chromosome karotype (male)

Level 2 Tests

(to do with embryo implantation):

NK assay

TH1:TH2- intracellular cytokine ratio,

HLADQ alpha – female

HLADQ alpha – male

I hope this helps xx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Wishingfortheday]

Wow, thank you for the info. That’s a lot of tests but so important, it’s a shame they don’t do them in the beginning. I shall be showing this list to the consultant and see if he recommends for me to have any of them. Thank you 😊 xx

[AnnieAnnie]

Hi there, sorry to ask but I can't work it out from what you've written here or in previous posts but have you ever been pregnant? I've never been pregnant. I have a low AMH but on my first round of ivf which was private I got 6 eggs, 5 fertilised and were all top quality at day 3, 3 went to day 5, I had a 4ab transferred and sadly the other 2 didn't make it to freeze on day 6. I asked the question to my consultant, why hasn't it worked. He said that my eggs were good, they fertilised and made it to day 3, after day 3 that's when the sperm side of things start to take over and said that the next line of enquiry would be to do DNA testing on oh's sperm to see if there is a chromosomal issue. Long story short, I then became eligible for NHS funded treatment. I was advised by the NHS consultant not to go through with the DNA testing because why spend all that money when we can do icsi and they will pick out the best sperm anyway. So we got our referral from the NHS and we went to our initial consultation, it took place at a private clinc that undertakes NHS work in my ccg. This consultant said "if you were my daughter I would be telling you to get tested for the C4M2 variation". Apparently 15% of the population are a carrier and 22% of couples going through ivf are carriers. It can cause implantation failure, early miscarriage and rmc. I had the blood test and it came back positive that I am a carrier of the variant. If either parent is the carrier it can effect implantation and carrying and no matter which parent is the carrier, mother has to go on blood thinners and I'm now on clexane injections. Generally they dont see people go for the test until they've had a number of miscarriages and even the nurse taking the blood was surprised that having never had a pregnancy i was being tested. I'm hoping that we've got to the bottom of why I've never been pregnant and why our first cycle didn't work but time will tell. Good luck and I'm sure there are other ladies that can give you some feedback xx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to AnnieAnnie]

Wow you know you’re stuff and that’s brilliant. I’ve never been pregnant 😢, my amh is 3 and I had no other tests done before the 2nd round. I have a under active thyroid which goes against me but they said it’s fine. The other half’s sperm is frozen because they found that his tubes weren’t connected when he was in his mothers womb, we don’t know how much he’s got left from the 2nd round either.

I had short protocol first time and 9 collected with 4 fertilised, 5 day transfer with 2 put back in, wasn’t even told what quantity they were. None to freeze, Negative test from that one. 2nd round was long protocol, 9 collected, 5 fertilised, 2 left which were a bb grade and a bc, both put back in with none to freeze but I did have the option to do so, the only thing that put me off was them saying it might not have thawed properly, with just 5-10 mins to think about it I went for the 2. So much to go through your mind to think why it didn’t work but can’t dwell on it to much x

[AnnieAnnie]

Your numbers sound decent and the fact that you had good numbers fertilise is a good sign did you have ivf or icsi? What day transfers did you have? I had an amh of 3, then it went down to 2.3, up to 7.5 and down to 6.2. I've had all the normal tests and everything is fine. My thyroid is slightly underactive and I'm on 75mcg per day of levothyroxine. I've done a lot of reading on here and other places online and I was getting frustrated with not being taken seriously in relation to my implantation issues, if I would have waited I would have had my 2 cycles on the nhs and they would have been a waste of time but I wanted answers to why in nearly 6 years of ttc I've never had a positive test. I was certain that there was something wrong as to why I couldn't get pregnant but my eggs seemed to do ok, my oh's SA was above average in everything and I was thinking it had to be may be nk cells, a clotting issue or something to do with my lining. I think you need to seriously speak to your consultant and go through the facts, and where you go next and look at things as a process of elimination. If this cycle hasn't worked for us I'm going to ask my consultant about nk cells next! xx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to AnnieAnnie]

I had icsi both times and day 5 transfer on both also. I asked about another blood test to check levels before starting but they said my amh level would still be the same as before 😳 it just shows that it can change because of yours. I will ask them everything possible. Good luck with your next cycle xx

[AnnieAnnie in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

So they would have picked the best quality sperm then. Lol it annoys me that clinics say that AMH doesn't change! It does, my first 2 readings were in the space if two months of each other, between reading 2 and 3 it was 7 months and reading 3 and 4 was 4 months. The first 2 were done in the same nhs lab, my third by a private clinic and my fourth by the same nhs lab as first and second. I have been told there is no scientific reason for there to be such a change but that it could be to do with the conditions in the lab (I think the test is too heavily relied upon especially as it was the reason we got turned down for nhs funding initially). I had my amh tested after my first failed cycle by my private clinic and it had risen to 7.5 I then went back to the nhs and was then eligible for funding (the nhs did their own blood test as they wouldn't accept my private clinics even though they are fully regulated) it's all so much hard work trying to get answers. I hope you get some answers. Keep us update with what your clinic suggests, it will be interesting and maybe I could learn something or what to try next 😊 xx

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to AnnieAnnie]

I will do luv, you taught me a lot. Thank you xx

[Apdp]

Just want s to share my story with you as just seen my consultant on wed and was worried about what he was going to say. I’ve had 2 failed transfers so far with 6 still frozen. He made me feel much better. He said there is only a 40 to 50% chance a transfer will work so having 2 failed is perfectly normal. He told me to just keep going and don’t have a break between treatments as with each treatment the success rate improves. I am going to try the endometrial scratch the next time if this cycle doesn’t work. I’ve found it a real struggle mentally but we need to keep trying x

[Crazymrsrees79 in reply to Apdp]

Your a warrior hun, I hope you get your little miracle xx

[Apdp in reply to Crazymrsrees79]

Same to you x